The Bacta War (36 page)

Wedge dropped his hand on top of theirs. “Good. You know, the Imps on Coruscant used to call two Corellians together a conspiracy. Three they’d call a fight.”

“More fools they, then.” Corran smiled. “Any Corellian knows three of us together is a
victory
. It’s time we remind Iceheart and the rest of Imp holdovers of that very fact.”

32

Corran glanced at the chronographic display on the X-wing’s main monitor. “Whistler, confirm that we’re ten standard minutes past the time for the rendezvous.”

The R2 unit blatted out an annoyed tone.

“Fine, so I won’t ask you to confirm how late they are anymore—at least not every minute.” Corran forced himself to exhale deeply and tried to draw in some of the inner peace that Luke indicated such a cleansing breath should bring in its wake. He failed, and that just heightened his frustration. Despite accepting the mission, he had not liked having to be the one to draw Isard’s agent into Yag’Dhul. While he knew the deception Booster and Wedge had planned would certainly make the discovery of their base appear to be serendipitous, every second Karrde’s people were late allowed the image of a Thyferran taskforce appearing to pounce on them grow in his mind.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, but Corran had not come alone. Gavin, Rhysati, and Inyri flew X-wings to give him a complete flight, and Mirax had come along in the
Pulsar Skate
. None of them knew how dangerous their mission might be—and Corran granted that the odds of their ending
up dead on this mission probably were no greater than they were on any other—but he still would have felt better if he could have told them what was really going on.
Of course, that would mean
I’d
have to know what was going on
.

A light flashed on his communications console. He punched the button beneath it. “Nine here.”

“
Skate
here, Nine.” Mirax’s voice sounded good to him and immediately began to take the edge off his frustration. “So, as long as we’re waiting, you want to tell me what you said to my father?”

Corran frowned. “How do you know about that?”

“Well, I could say that you talk in your sleep, but you don’t.” The light tone in her voice conveyed the image of her smiling face to him. “When we headed out, my father shot me a private message. Normally he says I should make sure you take good care of me. This time he said I should keep my eye on you and follow your lead. Bit of a difference there.”

“Yeah, just a bit.”

“So?”

“We had a talk.”

“Are you going to tell me what was said, or am I going to convince Emtrey he needs to spend more time around you?”

“Hey, no reason to trot out the turbolasers here.” Corran hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “Your father and I had it out. He said I’d abandoned you on Thyferra …”

“What?!”

“…  and I accused him of having abandoned you when he went to Kessel.”

“What?! You really told him that?”

“Yeah, then I told him that you were everything he wanted to be and that the last person he should want interested in his daughter was someone who held himself to the same level of morality and responsibility he did.”

“And you still have your arms and legs intact?”

“Your father isn’t exactly a Wookiee, Mirax.” Corran forced a laugh. “Besides, it was about that point when Wedge intervened.”

“Ah, that explains why you’re both still alive.”

“Right. Wedge pointed out that since you love the both
of us, we’ve got a lot more in common than we do in conflict. He said, in essence, that we should grow up and start acting like adults.”

Mirax laughed lightly. “I bet that went over well with my father.”

“He listened, and the two of us were prepared to get back into it, but I let things bounce around inside my head and I realized I was disliking your father for the wrong reasons. Somewhere inside I figured it was my duty to my father to continue his rivalry with your father, then I realized my father hadn’t let it get personal. He might have hunted your father with a bit more gusto because your father didn’t make it easy, but he didn’t hate Booster. By allowing myself to do so, though, I was really going against everything my father had tried to teach me.”

“I can understand that.” Mirax’s voice softened. “And it kind of bothers you that your father never told you who your grandfather really was, doesn’t it?”

Corran thought for a second, then nodded. “I guess it does, but not in the sense that I would have expected. Part of me thinks I should feel betrayed because he kept that secret from me, but I don’t, really. In keeping it from me, he kept me safe. What I didn’t know I couldn’t reveal. I still don’t know if Grandpa Horn helped other Corellian Jedi families hide, but if one had been found out, more could have been discovered. And my father really did try to instill in me the code of honor the Jedi espoused. He also taught me to trust my instincts and hunches, which are glimmers of whatever talent I have.

“Where it bothers me is that, knowing my father, he had to have been inordinately proud of our heritage. He must have wanted to share it with me and would have, I suspect, after the Emperor died, but Bossk killed him before that happened. I would have thought he’d have come up with a way to get me the information if anything happened to him.”

“What about your grandfather, Rostek Horn?”

“He’s on Corellia, under the Diktat. I haven’t had a chance to communicate with him. Perhaps when this is all
over, that’s an option. Still, I would have liked to hear my father talk about his father.”

Whistler tootled.

Corran glanced at his monitor. “Whistler, what do you mean by ‘All you have to do is ask’?”

The droid hooted at him.

“Okay, so the statement is self-explanatory. What will happen if I ask?”

Whistler piped a triumphant tune.

“What’s Whistler saying, Corran?”

“Just a second, Mirax.” Corran reached out and ran a finger beneath the letters glowing on his monitor. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. My father encrypted a holographic file and loaded it into Whistler. Apparently he did this back when I joined CorSec—though Whistler says the message was recorded well before that—in case anything happened to him. Whistler says he was instructed to play the file for me at any point where I asked about it
and
could provide the encryption key. I’m going to assume the key is either Nejaa Halcyon or my father’s true name, Valin Halcyon.”

Even as Corran explained to Mirax what the droid was telling him, a chill puckered his flesh. He felt as if his father were reaching back out of the grave to touch him, and he marveled how his father had anticipated Corran’s eventually learning enough about his heritage to find the file of value. Before he had ever heard of Nejaa Halcyon, Corran would have put his father’s foresight down to luck or even coincidence, but he knew the Jedi believed in neither.
My father knew that someday I would want this information, so he prepared a way for me to get it
.

That realization opened a whole new den of Hutts, with every one of them a criminal kingpin. He thought of Luke Skywalker’s invitation to join him and train to become a Jedi Knight.
Did my father create this file in hopes that I would do just that?
Because the file had been created well before the Jedi’s reemergence had been confirmed, Corran knew his father couldn’t have anticipated the Jedi’s invitation to him.
Or could he?
Regardless of that, had his father intended his message to inspire Corran to learn more about his heritage?

The droid chirped out a question.

“No, Whistler, save the message. Now’s not the time to look at it.”

“Why not, Corran? We’ve got time to kill.”

“Because, Mirax, I don’t have time to consider all of the questions it might raise.”

“Such as?”

“Such as making me reconsider my answer to Luke Skywalker. Perhaps what my father has to tell me in this message will make me realize I
should
be learning to become a Jedi Knight. That decision would force other decisions, and some of them I don’t want to make—primary among them a decision to leave you to go off and study the ways of the Force. My other responsibilities—to the squadron and the prisoners we’re going to free—likewise make such a decision difficult. Right now I need to be able to focus on what I’m doing.”

“So you won’t play the message?”

Corran shook his head. “Not right now, certainly not until the Thyferran situation is over.”

“What I hear in your voice, Corran, is that you might not ever play it.”

“You know me very well, love.” Corran closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed against the lump in his throat. He reached up with a hand and pressed the gold Jedi Credit against the flesh of his breastbone. “This hologram is the last thing my father has left me, but he never would have done it if he thought it would completely disrupt my life.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Yeah. If it was something I had to hear, for my own good, Whistler would never have been instructed to wait until I asked to hear it.” Corran laughed, and that eased the tightness in his throat. “My father trusted me to make my own decisions and deal with the consequences.”

“That trust, Corran, is the last thing your father left you. It’s a most precious gift indeed, and one well suited to you.”

“Thanks, Mirax.” Whistler shrilled a warning, prompting Corran to look at his monitor. A dozen ships popped in from hyperspace in an arrow formation and headed straight
for the Rogue escort. “Whistler, pull manifests from each of the ships, then see if stated mass and performance profiles match.” He hit a switch on his comm unit, bringing him online with the Rogue’s tactical frequency. “Three, Five, and Six, fan out and pull life scans on the ships. If any of those ships are packed with more crew than we expect, I want to know about it.”

Corran waited five minutes for the other X-wings to gather the data and for Whistler to crunch it all down. The various freighters appeared to be massing about as much as they should for their stated cargoes, and none of them was loaded down with troops, so Corran assumed the convoy was legitimate. “The convoy is secure from my standpoint, Mirax.”

“I copy, Nine. This is
Pulsar Skate
to
Empress
’s
Diadem
. You’ve been cleared for continuation of the journey.”

“I copy,
Skate
. Feed us the coordinates and we can get this thing moving.”

“Coordinates for exit vector, jump duration, and speed on their way.”

Corran watched the data stream flow across the bottom of his monitor and wondered what Melina Carniss was making of it. He imagined she’d be disappointed because the first jump was just a short hop to a dead system. From there they’d get another exit vector that would put them on a straight line for the Yag’Dhul system, but the speed and duration data would suggest they were going to another system well beyond Yag’Dhul.
She’ll be anticipating calling in a strike on Folor in the Commenor system
.

Corran smiled as he thought about the surprise the convoy would be in for during their journey. The speed that was being set for them would allow them to slip past the Yag’Dhul system in hyperspace, but Booster had thought of a way to end their journey prematurely. The gravity well projector he’d gotten from Karrde and had grafted onto the station would create enough of a gravity shadow to pull the convoy out of hyperspace. The premature end of the flight would deliver the goods where they were most needed and
would be a trick clearly meant to conceal the location of the base from outsiders.

Which ought to be enough to make Carniss think secrecy is still important to us
. Corran dearly wished he knew the full extent of Wedge’s plan to deal with Isard’s forces, but he respected the security provided by the compartmentalization of such information.
I doubt I’ll know everything that goes on unless or until this is all over and I get debriefed
.

Corran brought his X-wing around on the appointed exit vector and chopped his throttle back to 51 percent of thrust. In hyperspace, the X-wings were twice as fast as the freighters, save Carniss’s
Diadem
and Mirax’s
Skate
. By dropping his thrust to just over half, the X-wing would arrive in-system just before the freighters and could head off any ambushes.

The other X-wings pulled up off his S-foils. “Nine to
Skate
. Escort is ready to head out.”

“Lead on, Nine, and be careful.”

“As ever,
Skate
. Wouldn’t want your father to be disappointed in me.”

33

Melina Carniss managed to keep a smile on her face and a light lilt in her voice despite being anxious to leave the Yag’Dhul station. “No, Mirax, no need to apologize. I’ve enjoyed your company over the last two days. I would have felt quite out of sorts and lonely had you not taken me under your wing.”

Mirax smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way. I am sometimes accused of being somewhat smothering.”

Somewhat? Lady, you could smother a Givin, and they don’t need to breathe
. “Again your company was appreciated. And let your father know I’m sure Karrde won’t have a problem with my having been kept here awaiting payment. He’s very understanding that way.”

Mirax stepped back away from the turbolift opening. “See you on the next trip.”

“I’m sure. Good-bye.” Melina remained smiling even after the door closed.
Be just like her father to have security holocams set up here in the turbolift. I have to maintain the charade until I’m back aboard
Diadem.

Carniss had hoped to be away from the Yag’Dhul station as quickly as possible, but the delay in payment meant her
ship was the last of the convoy to leave. Despite being a huge station, Yag’Dhul’s docking bays were mostly in use, requiring a piecemeal unloading of the convoy. That delay meant the shipments couldn’t be verified, hence the reason payment was late. Mirax’s insistence that she leave
Diadem
and enjoy the station’s facilities meant she had no chance to send a message out to Thyferra to report the location of Rogue base.